Work Lean
All that time in a MAP package but I still have great legs
Modern QA solutions are lean in the extreme, leaving room for fatter profits. And they’re a must at higher packaging-machine speeds.
Work lean
Is quality assurance a cost or an investment? Actually, it’s an investment in cost control — one that pays off remarkably fast.
Profit margins are relatively thin in the food industry, so any technology that actually helps reduce costs has a proportionately bigger effect on your bottom line. Which explains why producers are switching from quality control to quality assurance — from random off-line testing to continuous on-line testing — now that the technology is so affordable.
Assume that like many food makers you’ve been running frequent spot checks. Every time you pull a package off the line for testing you’re destroying the packaging. And the more packaging lines, the more waste is generated.
Meanwhile, the packaging line — or lines — keep running! So if there’s a problem, you’ll have to test, and possibly destroy, an entire batch. For many plants that can easily run into tens of thousands of units — or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Contrast this approach with modern online systems that provide non-destructive testing on a continuous basis without operator intervention. If there’s a problem, production stops automatically with no unnecessary loss of product.
Yes, it costs a little more. At first. But online systems quickly earn their keep by slashing product waste, reducing manpower requirements, simplifying data handling and minimizing the likelihood of product recalls — all of which leaves room for healthier profits.